Phone Calls with Founders: Recent Episodes

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Conversation Timestamps

• [00:21] Jen calling in from Taipei
• [02:15] Jen shares early life and background
• [04:18] How she got to Twitter
• [05:07] Jen discusses some of the projects she worked on for Twitter
• [27:36] How to differentiate your app from others
• [25:45] Launching the Lunch Money app
• [34:46] Hacker News

Resources Mentioned

• Lunch Money App
• Jen's Personal Blog
• Twitter Internships
• Mint Personal Finance

Transcript

Travis: Hey Jen. Hi. How's it going?

Jen: Good. How are you?

Travis: Great. Are we, are you calling me from, are we talking like from Canada or Taipei or Taiwan? Taipei, I pay that's awesome. I don't even know where that's at, but I'm impressed. Well, it is a pleasure to talk to you. I'm like boy, and I have been fanboying over your lunch money app ever since I signed up and I'm so happy that I ran across it and I'm now a customer. So I'm proud to say that. Um, so good job.

Jen: Thank you for this part. So, I'm dying. It’s so nice. Awesome.

Travis: Kind of get to know you and your husband and your story. I know you guys reside in Canada's or you're Canadian. You reside in Canada during the summers, but in the winters and you go back to Taipei, right?

Jen: Yeah. Well, this is definitely pre COVID, but we did this for two years now. The first winter we went over to Fukuoka, Japan, and then this winter, well, earlier this year we chose Taipei.

Travis: Okay. So you guys are like no meds during the winter. Just kind of like traveling around to new and exciting places.

Jen: Yeah. I think the term is digital snowman, which I've really come to like, Oh, I like that. I've never heard that one. Yeah.

Travis: That’s awesome. Okay. So you have to tell me about your story, your discipline, and how lunch money came around or came to be. And I know there's a story behind, I want to hear that sort of the listeners, but your core discipline is coding, correct? Yep. Okay. Awesome. Can you tell me a little bit about your backstory and like how you came to, to create this app and what was the epiphany and then some of those things.

Jen: Yeah. So I guess let's see, where do I start? Um, I feel like I've been creating like little web apps for a while. It just kind of to either satisfy my own curiosity or just for fun. And then that was earlier in my career when I had more free time and I was kind of less burnt out from coding. And so I started my career at Twitter and I quit after about three and a half years. And I started a company with my friend and then I burnt out from that. And then I just decided to go on a sabbatical for a year and I don't think I touched code or my get hub at all for like a year and a half. Um, and so

Travis: Twitter for a few years, what was, how did you land at Twitter and what was that experience like as you've mentioned burnout now twice. So that's a thing.

Jen: Yeah, it's definitely a thing. I don't know. I applied when I was still in college and I was lucky enough to get an interview and I guess they liked me and they offered a full-time position. And to me, you know, growing up in Canada, it was kind of a no-brainer to pursue this opportunity to kickstart my career in San Francisco.

Travis: That is awesome. And what were you getting other offers at the time or was it just like happenstance? Twitter was the first to reach out and give you an offer and you're into Twitter. So you went for it.

Jen: Yeah. So I was, I had an internship in San Francisco at the time. And so this was, let's see, I think this was about four months before graduation. And so I kind of wanted my last four months of college to be pretty chill. I didn't want it to be kind of frazzled looking for a full-time job. And so I tried to get all my interviews and while I was still in San Francisco and I had two offers in total and the other one was for a startup that eventually got acquired by LinkedIn. But looking back, I think joining Twitter was the right choice for me because it grew so fast while I was there. I was able to join all these different teams and gain just a wide array of experience. Yeah.

Travis: Yeah. Well, can you speak to any of those projects that you were working on? Cause I think that is really interesting. And also what a lot of junior devs might be interested in are those that are just still bootstrapping. They haven't worked for a large company and I like that. I know inherently because I've worked corporate America for a while that you can get bounced around from project to project. And so I'm wondering what were some interesting things that you remember you were working on?

Jen: Sure. My time at Twitter, I was pretty lucky in terms of having the right managers and also just going for the right opportunities. So I was hired initially to work on an internal team for like an internal monitoring tool. And so, you know, as drawing Twitter, I was all excited like, wow, Twitter it's used by so many people, but I ended up working on a tool that's just used by, you know, a couple of hundred engineers. Um, it ended up being a really awesome team and I think it was a great start for me to, you know, be able to work on a tool and be able to communicate directly with the people that are using it and kind of honing my skills on, you know, doing user interviews and UI and UX and all of that. It's pretty obvious how that has helped me today with lunch money.

Travis: Because the feedback loop, when you're working on large projects that eventually get shipped to the consumer, the feedback loop is much longer, mean it could be a year before you there's that like satisfaction moment, but you were creating an internal tool for your peers and you're able to get immediate feedback. And also the Atta boys pats on the back, I imagine.

Jen: Exactly. And because it wasn't, you know, it wasn't client facing at all. I had full autonomy. I could just push things to master, you know, if something looked wonky, like I would just find out from the user, it wouldn't have to go through intense design review or any of that. So that was really great for just moving quickly and learning quickly and just growing quickly as well.

Travis: So I'm a non-technical founder. I would love to code. I did like HTML back in the nineties, but that's it. So I'm jealous number one, but number two, it's funny because every so often as I'm wandering around on YouTube, I'll see a video like the day in the life of a developer at Twitter and engineer at Twitter. And they'll just make this cute, funny, like chill video of them going to work at like nine having cereal and then coding for an hour and then going to lunch with friends. And then, I mean, is it like that? Cause it doesn't seem like burnout to me.

Jen: Yeah. I watched those videos as well. And I also very much question how real it is, but yeah. I mean I would roll into work 10 and then make myself a child latte and then start coding and then yeah, go to lunch and then keep coding, stay until dinner and then like go home. And so if you think about it, it seems pretty cool. Like, wow, you get to eat all your meals at work, you know, and we even had a gym at work. So I did that. And what you don't end up realizing is that all of that is designed to keep you at work for as long as possible. And so then that's how the burnout kind of creeps up on you.

Travis: Yeah, definitely the theme that I saw in watching several of those videos, but at different companies, like I saw one for Facebook, for Google, for Snapchat, for Twitter, and they all got home really late, you know? And so I was like, how is that the life that I would want if I was an engineer, you know what I mean? So is that where some of the burnout came in?

Jen: I think in the beginning, I didn't mind it at all. I mean, I was living in a totally new city. I was meeting new people. I was meeting friends and we would all kind of have that same schedule. And so it wouldn't be out of the norm to meet up at like seven or eight for dinner or drinks. And so my daily life would just be like work until I have plans and then like go out and then sleep late, wake up late and so on and so forth, which is pretty nice. I think, as like a post-college grad, like, you know, suddenly you have autonomy over your schedule. You're not bound by like a nine to five, really like a traditional nine to five. And you're not bound by, you know, like this is what your class schedule is. And so I think in the beginning it was nice to just kind of set my own pace. And I think, you know, I was younger. I could keep up with that and it was fun.

Travis: Yeah. And you're all, and there's camaraderie there, right? I mean, if you're out having drinks and you're talking about the day, like, I mean that there's a lot of currency there definitely fast forward that wasn't the life for you anymore. You move on for Twitter then where,

Jen: So as I was starting to get burnt out from Twitter, and I think a big reason is just how fast the company was growing. It was really cool to see, you know, like the 10 X growth that you hear about, but then there's all these little changes that happen from the top. And they trickle down eventually to the individual contributor and it all adds up. And, you know, there was a lot of org changes and it just became difficult to get excited about work. And at the time I was living with a roommate and she was trying to start up her company and she is also a non-technical founder who taught herself to code. She went through a bootcamp and then she did the MVP for the app. And I just, you know the juxtaposition of me leaving for work and being really like annoyed about it. And then seeing her code, you know, all day and all night passionately about this idea that she has, I guess just kind of like seeped into my mind a little bit. And then I think she saw that and she was able to convince me to join on as technical co-founder. So we did that for about a year and then I also burnt out from that.

Travis: Which is totally fine. I mean, you know, people pivot all the time in their, in their lives. So yeah, I mean, it's interesting. And I also correct me if I'm wrong, but does, if Twitter works the same way, I think they do, but it's not a traditional corporate company. The tech companies, the way they structure promotions, right. Promotions happen with are like project based and they're peer reviewed. I hear it like Facebook and Google and Uber. And those is it the same kind of setup for Twitter.

Jen: So when I was there and I guess this is part of the growing pains thing, every promotion cycle that I went through, the process was totally different. So there were definitely still trying to figure it out.

Travis: Yeah. You know, it's interesting what you saw your roommate doing that attracted to you. And I kind of have a similar story to like, when I started my SAS app within four years of building it, I was able to double what my corporate salary was. And I remember telling my wife, I'm like in four years, I would've never been able to get promoted fast enough in order to do get the same result. And so that's a Testament right there to invest in yourself. So you got burnout with working with your roommate and then you pivoted and then is that where lunch money came in?

Jen: Yeah, well, in between I took a really long break just to kind of decompress from the San Francisco life decompress from being surrounded by, you know, people that were by and large motivated by the same thing and, or had more or less the same goals of, you know, working up, working up the tech company ladder or starting your own company. Yeah. So I traveled around Asia and Europe and just kind of got a new lease on life, I guess just like figure out what's really important to me. And I think it was like literally a month into my, not even a month. I think it was like the first weekend that I was alone by myself in Europe. I was like, you know what? I think I want to end up back in Toronto. And that's where I grew up. That's where my parents are.

Jen: I never would have imagined that I would go back there, but for some reason it was just really appealing to me. And so it was really awesome how enlightening that decision was. And I continued my sabbatical with that in mind that I was going to return to Toronto and I did. And so, um, my husband joined me there and we kind of started our new life in Toronto. And at that point I knew I didn't want to work for a company again. I just knew that I didn't want to, you know, be an employee and get sucked into that. And so, but you know, I also had to make money somehow. And so I found a happy medium of freelancing.

Travis: Now, just for context, your husband was working at the time, right? Like, did you have a little bit of runway personal runway so that you could freelance and just not have to like March right into another job?

Jen: We definitely have savings from our time. And then the cost of living in Toronto is lower. My husband had to find a job in Toronto to get because he's American. So to get a work permit, to stay in Canada for a bit. And then for me, because for once I'm in a country where I can not work and legally stay, it was awesome. So I took full advantage of that after years of going through visa issues and the same, it was really nice.

Travis: Yeah, absolutely. So as I understand your story and a little bit of the research, I did, you guys were used to budgeting as a unit anyways, but that's where the idea for lunch money came up right. Through trying to automate this and just have a better experience for personal finance.

Jen: Yeah. It started off as a Google sheet and it just got bigger and bigger. And I think we did the Google sheet for almost a year. And so if you just imagine a year's worth of spending and that includes time abroad in cash based society. So every little, you know, bottle of water or snack or whatever would go in there, it got really big, it got really clunky. And I always had in my mind that I wanted to turn it into an app, not really for the purpose of marketing it into a product to sell, but more just, you know, it just seems more fun if I had more freedom with how I could formulate different pages and do different calculations and do currency exchange properly because you know, I'm on Excel with, so the sheet was pretty basic at the end of the day.

Travis: So do you look back and say, damn, I was so foolish to step into this niche because there were so many big incumbents like mint and QuickBooks and all these other finance things, or did you know that going in and were like, I'm going to build this for me. And if it turns out to be something then great.

Jen: Yeah, definitely the latter, I didn't realize I was in this, you know, personal finance and budgeting space until I was in it. And then I was like, Oh, okay, well I guess my competitors is the behemoth mint, you know, and the very awesome lineup. So it was definitely a step-by-step. I was in Japan for our first digital journey when I started coding lunch money. And it was purely for fun. It was purely an escape from the freelancing gigs that I had. And it was just the thing to do. Cause it was pretty gloomy in Fukuoka during the winter months as well.

Travis: Yeah, because I'm a non-technical founder. I have a remote team and a lot of them are contract. What didn't you like about contract work? I'm curious. Good question.

Jen: Two contract works. And one of them was for the, for the company that I helped start actually. So I enjoyed that because I knew everyone and you know, they're my friends. So working with them again was really nice. And then the other contract gig was, you know, as basically a part-time employee. That was nice because I was working with people who were much smarter than me and I had self-taught react and they had been working react for a few years. And so it was nice to kind of like round out what I knew. There was a lot of good parts, but I guess the part that I didn't like was, it was just, I wasn't really passionate about, are there things that I was working on, it was very transactional. You know, like when you're a contractor, you're given a task, you complete it, you get paid. It sounds nice, you know, an ends to a means, but having done that for a year it's I don't know. It's just like it doesn't spark.

Travis: Yeah. It's not yours. You're not building something of yours for the future. Right? Exactly. No, I totally going to resonate with folks. So yeah, absolutely. Okay. So you start tooling around with it and you get like an MVP up. And was that the first moment when you're like, Oh, this is gonna, this might be something, what was like that, that first aha moment. You're like, Oh, okay. This, I need to put a lot of energy into.

Jen: My first goal was yeah. The MVP to get my husband and I off of our spreadsheet. So after I achieved that, that was not the aha moment because then my husband filed like a ton of bugs and I was like, okay, let's keep working on this. And then I run it out a bit more. And then I think I put up a landing page to try to get some interests. I think I got maybe like 10 or 20 signups. And so definitely not the aha moment. And then I launched it to them and then I hit like a crises, like, okay, my product is live. I did that thing where I didn't like validate it at all. I didn't like, pre-sell it. I don't have like a wait list of hundreds of people. And I just didn't, you know, I had no idea how to market it. And then on a whim, I decided to post it on hacker news. And then that was definitely the aha moment because it hit front page for almost 24 hours. And I just remember that day, I have like a little Slack bot that dings me every time there's a sign up. And it was just like crazy how quick it was going. And I think in that moment, I was just like, wow, I'm going to like quit my freelancing gigs and do this full time because that's, it

Travis: Was that like glass of wine night with you in the hubs and like, yeah.

Jen: 00:17:44 Oh my God. I remember that day so vividly because it was like I was making lunch and then I just started hearing the dings and then it wouldn't stop. And then my husband had to finish making the lunch and then I remember it just kept going all day. And then that night, that evening we had plans with a friend that we hadn't seen in a while. So this is one of those like all night catch up sessions. And I was trying so hard to like stay in the moment and like not looking at my phone and all the while emails are piling up, like people are sending in feedback and all these comments. And I think it was pretty successful. I think we stayed out from like six to like 11 or maybe even midnight. And then I remember after a friend left, I just, I was like, Justin, my husband, as I just said, I'm staying up late tonight. Like I got to go through all these emails. I got to find out like, find out what's happening. It was so exhilarating.

Travis: Oh my gosh. I've had those moments too when friends or family are over and it's like, you just, that's the entrepreneur life. You just got it. Like, I gotta take a break, hold on. I gotta, I would dip into my office and like do something real quick or answer a Slack message or when something exciting what's happened. So that totally resonates with me. And that's so cool. Was your husband like, high-fiving you? And…

Jen: I think he has a few videos from that day where he's just like laughing at me, like happily, of course. And I'm just sitting there looking very like anxious and I'm just like, what's going on? What does this mean?

Travis: You got it to be brave enough one day to put that on your, about us page. That would be so cool. That like founder moment when you know it's gonna work, you know?

Jen: Yeah. That's a good idea.

Travis: So, okay. So, but so now you've got the sing and the sing is getting some attention, some traction, you can see the future of it, you know, you can see like the rainbow and you can't see the end where the rainbow hits the ground, but you know, it's somewhere there and you start inching forward. What's your next move the next day?

Jen: Yeah, it was basically trying to, let's see. I had put all of the feedback, feature requests, bug reports into a sauna, I think. And I think my first party was fixing the main bugs and then just trying to figure out what people were looking for. I think at that point, yeah. My first party was definitely fixing the bugs. And then afterwards I was trying to figure out what was going to get people to confer because at that point it was a 45 day trial. So I have 45 days to convince a thousand people that signed up to stay on. And some of them were like, you know, I really want API or, Hey, I'm not in the U S and Canada. So I don't have a good way of importing my transactions properly. And so something like a CSV importer would work. So just figuring out what those must haves are.

Travis: Okay. I totally get that. So basically like what a lot of founders don't know that having built something yet is like building. This is like driving the car and doing an oil change at the same time. Right.

Jen: While your tire is like wobbly. So

Travis: You start fixing the bugs, you start trying to figure out, and I saw your blog post about how you, that was one of your mistakes. And I love how you were so open about that with that the 45 day trial. I agree with that. It's way too long. It's like, you know, they're going to know within the first, probably 48 hours now, I think even, I would say within the first six hours of trying an app, you know, whether it's right for you and that you're going to commit to at least the first couple months of billing. So I'm glad you learned that lesson and then you course corrected, but the Jew immediately start thinking about, okay, how am I going to market this?

Jen: No, I mean, cause I had a thousand signups already. I didn't, I was like, Oh my God, no more please. Yeah. And the 45 day trial was definitely, it was really good in the beginning because it bought me a lot of time and then it was nice to have gotten to a point where eventually I realized like, okay, I don't need that much time. You know, like, yeah. It's at a point where it's full, featured enough that people can use it for a week and be like, yeah, this meets my needs.

Travis: That's awesome. So you're, we're about 12 months into production now. Yeah.

Jen: Yeah. Just over 12 months. Yup. Okay.

Travis: And are you happy where you're at?

Jen: Yes. I'm pretty happy. Yeah. People ask me like, you know, my kind of like corporate friends, you know, like, Oh, have you met your goals? Like, what are your KPIs like and all that stuff. And you know, I have like a loose goals spreadsheet where I just kind of like kind of estimate where I'll be and where I want to be, but I don't follow it too, too closely. I was at the beginning of the year and I think it was just giving me extra stress. And by then, I guess like, you know, as lunch money is getting bigger and like more people are knowing about it and knowing about me and the app and then kind of word of mouth spreads. And so it just kind of compounding at this point. And so I'm learning to just kind of chill out and letting it kind of grow organically. I could definitely put a lot of like marketing effort and all that, but I don't know. I think I was on the brink of burning out and maybe I, you know, realize that. And so I'm just chilling out for a bit. Cause I don't want to, you know, I don't want to burn out with lunch money. This is like, I see this going for as long as I can for sure.

Travis: Yeah. And you're not looking necessarily for VC money, so nobody is breathing down your neck. If you got a decent MRR going and you and your husband are happy with that, then that's the whole reason why you don't take VC money is so that you can control your pace. Right?

Jen: Definitely. Definitely. I wrote a blog post recently where I was reflecting on solo preneur worship and staying independent. And I think I wrote something that was like, if I wanted to make a bunch of money and make a name for myself, I wouldn't be a solopreneur ship optimizes for freedom for us and not much.

Travis: Absolutely. I call it lifestyle businesses. And that's what I tried to build as well. I'm right there with you. I mean, I could tell you as a user, how I feel like you differentiate in the market, but how do you feel you differentiate between some of these other apps?

Jen: Great question. So the whole reason why I created lunch money and why didn't just go for one of the many, many existing solutions, because I couldn't find a solution that did multicurrency well, because at that point I had, you know, I made money in America and then I was living in Toronto and then we were living in Japan. And so it was just really crazy. And so I set out to do a really great multi-currency solution and none of the major budgeting apps out there do multi-currency, it's all like, you know, if you sign up for a minutes, like everything is in one currency, which is kind of silly. Um, and I think why not have some like third party, you know, extra manual steps that you have to do to make it all work. And so that was the main differentiating factor. And I think as lunch money has grown, I think there's a few features that are really interesting.

Travis: I think the rules engine is something that our users really like, that was one of the things that I didn't like about mince was it felt like there was a lot of magic happening and most of the time the magic wasn't very good. Yeah. Yeah. Like a lot of times I think just end up kind of confused why things, you know, got categorized a certain way or whatever. And so a big thing that I tried bacon to lunch money is like, Hey, we're going to try to like automate what we can, but we're going to be super transparent about it. So you can dig under the hood and see, you know, what your auto categorization rules are and stuff like that. So you're aware, but you can also use the rules engine to create more kind of complex rules. Like, you know, if a transaction comes in, then split it automatically and tag things appropriately and stuff like that. I think there's a lot more customization. And then I think one of the other differentiating factors is just the fact that I'm, you know, an indie developer support is really important to me. Like I think providing really good customer service, letting users know that I'm working on the product actively, that I really care about it. You know, I'm not going to sell out and shut it down or whatever. I think that's also really important because this is something that I want people to use for a really long time.

Jen: Yeah. And so let me tell you my perspective of lunch money and what there's three things that drew me to it or made me kind of fanatical about your products. When I first tried it out, um, one was the design. It feels like it doesn't feel like an old stuffy budgeting app. I mean, most people don't like the budget. Anyways. Most people don't like to see their bleak outlook for their finances. And so your design is whimsical and it's lighthearted. And so it's a little less intimidating when you go into it. So that was the first thing that caught my eye. But the second thing was just how easy the layout is. And then also the rules, you know, a lot of apps, the rules engine behind it, it doesn't work, you know, in my experience with, with money it's working really, really well. And that alleviates a lot of work that I to think about.

Travis: 00:26:43 So that's like, perfect. And then also your tech stack on it. It was really good because it's super Zippy when I go in, there were other apps lag when going from screen to screen or like button actions and that kind of stuff. That makes sense. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. So huge fan of it. That's so awesome. So you're going to take it easy now. And are you still actively, uh, I'm sure you are. I mean, you can't say no. Right, but are you sure you're actively listening to feedback from the users and like, you know, where do you see yourself with lunch money in terms of feature sets in the next year? Yeah,

Jen: I am definitely always listening to user feedback. I reply to every single email, even the ones that are like, oh, you know, you don't need to reply this, but here's like a little snippet of feedback. I just love hearing what people think about my product and I'm constantly improving it. The next major release is going to have, you know, a huge redesign for the tables to kind of make them a little bit going back to the spreadsheet, uh, roots. And so resizable columns and, and keyboard shortcuts are coming soon. So it's definitely improving continuously. I dunno, it's just such a great feeling to work on a product, you know, and have total freedom to develop the next feature sets and have a set of users that really trust you and feel like their feedback is being heard. And it's just, it's unlike any job I've ever had. You know, I'm just excited to get up in the morning and, and continue on the feature that I was working on the night before.

Travis: Yeah. It is a special bond and kinship when they suggest a feature and then you're able to accommodate it or you eventually ship it. It does build that confidence. And this is a great feeling. And you know, I've been working my ass off for the last five years on various projects and my main SAS, but a lot of folks will ask me, well, how, how are you working so hard or why do you work? And I tell them, it's not, you know, at this point it's not like work, you know, I enjoy building something for my future. So it doesn't seem like work. So it's a lot easier to burn the midnight oil when you're in that scenario versus when you're building somebody else's dream, you know?

Jen: Exactly. Yeah. I remember like the only time I've ever had this feeling was like back in high school. When, you know, I also started with just HTML and CSS and very basic, I think PHP and JavaScript and I would make websites all the time and I just, that's how it spend my summers. I would sleep really late. Just kind of making graphics where my website and getting up at like six in the morning, the second my parents went to work, I just got up and like continued working on it. And it was just such a great feeling. It's I dunno, it's just like pure passion, I guess. Yeah.

Travis: And you know, the other thing that a lot of founders miss is they're always looking for like this idea and you're doing something that I'm doing too, which is I'm building something to solve a need or problem for myself because I have that problem. And then all you need to do is just go and look for other use that also have the same problems. That makes sense. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And I think that you've executed on that. Well, and you have kind of proven out that theory, you know,

Jen: I got lucky there because I didn't, it didn't start off like that. And, and then it was more like I stumbled upon. Oh wow. Like, you know, I guess it would make sense that a lot of readers of hacker news, you know, mostly also engineers from San Francisco that travel a lot and maybe remote workers and they also see the value in lunch money.

Travis: Okay. So lunch money goes another year, let's say another two years and it grows exponentially. You get bigger and bigger.

Jen: Okay.

Travis: I like using that word and I want that for you. What do you do? How do you as a solo entrepreneur, how do you grow a team to support that lifestyle that you're trying to live? And you know what I mean? Yeah.

Jen: Well, let me preface this by saying, this is totally my thinking now. And you're so free to ask me in a year where my thinking is, but I have no aspirations to build a team around this. I think that that would just add complexity. I think it would add more stress because I didn't feel like onboarding someone would be a lot of work and I have, you know, high standards for the stuff that I ship. And I think that for now, like it's still very much sustainable for me to continue developing on my own. I think the hardest part to scale would probably be support, but I'm trying to look into other channels for that. Like we have a Slack channel where people can chat with each other and I feel like that's alleviated a lot of support tickets, to be honest, I think that I would actually implement like a cap on users. So I think if I hit, you know, a couple of thousand or a hundred more users and it became maybe unsustainable, but you know, I'm still very satisfied with the MRR that I'm bringing in that I would probably just close sign-ups and turn it into kind of a waitlist type product.

Travis: Act. Now, you know what happens with wait-lists right. I mean, that's just, that's how Apple, I mean, you know, so many products, as soon as you make it elusive to somebody, I mean, just be careful what you wish for. Yeah. I mean, it's,

Jen: I think it would be awesome if lunch money grew that big, but I guess I'm thinking about where my life has headed in the next few years and starting a team is so not on my list of things that I wanna achieve.

Travis: That's awesome. Okay. Well, just be careful. Cause you know, there is support, there is marketing. I know you've tried a few things to market it right in the past and then they haven't worked out some have, so, you know, just to be careful with it, but I totally respect it.

Jen: Yeah. I mean, I just, I don't want the quality to go down, you know, like I love the connections that I can make with, you know, the users and I'm not chasing, you know, after like a huge MRR. And so I think it would be cool to just kind of cap it and it's kind of like, I don't know, just I can keep the quality I can keep, I can keep the connections and if someone turns, then I can let someone else in. I don't know. That's just my like thinking right now.

Travis: What are you at right now? You're like $8 a month. Yup. Okay. So 2000 users at 16 grand a month, minus your expenses, it looks like you're pretty prudent with that and you know, the budgeting side. So, you know, that's a really good solo lifestyle, SAS business, even after the expenses. Have you thought about, especially if you're going to cap users, have you thought about expansion revenue within the app within the same users? Because essentially once you have somebody and they've been with you for six months, they kind of know the app. I would expect support tickets to kind of level off or go down because they're used to the application and there's no more question marks, right? Less tool tips that need to be clicked on. So to me it seemed like the next evolution to grow revenue, but not increase your workload is to do expansion MRR with new features that you could charge them for. Is that something that's correct?

Jen: You mean like extra feature sets that costs more to add on? Yep. Oh interesting. No, I haven't thought about that. Actually the pricing is going to go up probably in the next few weeks to $10. So I'm trying to just increase it with every X number of new users. Um, cause I do grandfather people in to whatever price that they signed up that, but I haven't thought about, I guess I did think about it. A lot of people ask me, you know, if we don't do the automatic banking syncing, like could it be cheaper or whatever, but the way I see it as I probably, I see things just kind of for simplicity, just everyone pays the same price I think is the easiest way to go about it. And I price it based on, I guess my time that it takes to maintain it. I don't know what that extra feature set would look like just yet. It'll come to you

Travis: Come to my, from my SAS, mine didn't come to me until about three, three and a half years later after I started. But the impetus for that was my team was growing. And every time I made a new hire, I was like, I need to make some more money because I don't want to, I'm happy where I'm at. And I don't want to take that hit revenue wise for that new person, but I needed that new person. So I'm like, okay, I got to grow this a little bit more. And so I started looking at expansion revenue. So, but if you're not going to grow a team, then it doesn't really matter, I guess.

Jen: Yeah. I guess that makes sense for you for sure.

Travis: Well, look, I can't wait to tell everybody about this. I've been telling everybody, friends and family about your application because it's so cool. And I think it appeals to the folks that aren't really into doing budgets and managing the transactions. Then I also think it appeals to those that do it's, you've really done a good job of striking a balance, I think between those two segments. And so I think that's why you're going to do really, really well this application. And I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me. I can't wait to, to tell the world about your app, to be honest.

Jen: That's so nice. Thank you so much for your support. It really means a lot. I think like sometimes I get really sucked into what I'm doing with lunch money and then I don't hear all that good feedback and it's always nice to hear what people like about it and that they notice all the little thoughts that I put in.

Travis: Yeah. And so from one founder to another, you're doing a great job and I'm excited to watch your story as you grow. And I'm also excited that you kind of like got out of fortune 5,000 tech companies and you're just doing your own thing. I think there's a place for that and people that want to be there, they should be there. They want to be there, but I love how you're able to kind of make your own path in the world. And this is the way you're doing it. So I wish you all the best of luck. I'm going to put all the links to your blog and the app in the show notes. And I really appreciate you taking time to be on the show and letting folks get to know you a little bit better.

Jen: Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for allowing me to share my story. It was really fun talking to you.

Travis: Yeah, absolutely. And I'll see you around Twitter, I guess.”

Jen: All right. Thanks. Bye. Take care.

Travis: Thanks for listening to this episode, go to SAS preneur.blog. That's S a S P and r.blog, Saskatoon or.blog to checkout more episodes. And the art of, as I write all about being a founder and launching your next

View Details

Conversation Timestamps

• [2:04] Why people call him Mubs
• [3:12] Mubs shares early life and background
• [4:40] Travis goes to New York story
• [11:41] Mubs on being an engineer
• [14:00] What Travis wants for his son Colin
• [16:23] Mubs and his family aspirations
• [21:00] Mubs current projects
• [22:56] “Will Robots Take My Job?”
• [30:34] Working with Nathan Latka on Founder’s Path
• [42:40] How Mubs stands out in a crowded field
• [48:25] Book Recommendation

Resources Mentioned

• Will Robots Take My Job
• Stripe Capital
• Founder Path
• "Built to Sell" by John Warrillow

Transcript

Travis: You're listening to Phone Calls with Founders', I hop on the phone with software founders all across the world and we talk about their journey, candid insights, actionable tips and ideas, and you can reflect on as you scale your business to the next level.

Travis: Welcome to the show.

Travis: Hello. Hey, how you doing? Hey, man, how is my audio? Yeah, sounds pretty good. Awesome. Then I feel so weird calling you mobs like we've known each other for 20 years. But I notice that's what you go by. And I'm so happy you put that out there because I wasn't going to I knew I'm going to fuck up your first name.

Mubasher Iqbal: I know it's cool. No, I've been called Mubs since I was about six years old. So as you can imagine, having five and six year olds say my full name wasn't going to work either. So everybody started calling me up and it stuck.

Travis: Yeah, yeah. No, I like it, man. It's nice and it's short and sweet. You should try to get like some sort of mobs demain.

Mubasher Iqbal: You know, if you asked me for my email, my email would have been me mobs dot me.

Travis: Yes, I'd have been a great. All right. So you're in the East Coast. You're near New York?

Mubasher Iqbal: Yes, I am. I live in upstate New York now. I used to live out west, but then I moved to New York and we lived in the city for a while. But for the last 16 years or so, we've lived in upstate New York now.

Travis: So I've got to tell you, my New York story, I went to New York for the first time two years ago, and I'm forty three years old now. So it took me a while to get to New York City. But but before I tell that story, I want to hear a little bit about your background. You got a British accent, right? So, yes. When did you move to the States?

Mubasher Iqbal: Well, so I guess the story starts earlier than that in that I was born in a little village in the north of Pakistan, but my dad went to school in England. And so when he finished school, he was like, the family's moved to England. So when I was about four years old, we moved to England and I lived in England for about 18 years. And after I finished school, I got my first job. I have to do with an Australian company which was also moving from Australia to San Francisco. So in nineteen ninety seven, I moved from England to San Francisco. Yeah. So I lived out there for a few years that I got a job offer to move out here in New York City. I worked there for a few years. Then I started doing the whole welcome home thing. So in July of 2000, I got my first job that was in an office. And so ever since then, so since July of two thousand, I've been working out of either an apartment or a house.

Travis: Wow. Yeah, which is great because it's great for what we're going through right now in 2020. But quality of life is just an awesome thing and a lot of people would love to be in your position, so that's awesome. And you're a prolific tinker-maker and so I want to get into that. But let me just tell you this New York story. So it's summer of twenty eighteen, I think it was. And I head up to New York, going to do two weeks there. I'm walking around just being a tourist. Right. First time that I'm in all like my head, just my neck hurts because I'm like it's pointed straight up the entire time. New Yorkers are shoulder me saying, hey asshole, what are you going?

Travis: But so somehow I landed in the East Village. So I'm in the East Village on Third Street, and it's like three o'clock in the afternoon. And I'm super tired. I'm quench. And here's the other thing. A lot of people don't know when you're visiting New York is like you go there because you hear like the restaurants are so great and they are. But you know what? By the time I was done walking around, it was time for me to eat. I was so hungry I never end up going to any like a lot of restaurants. I just ended up like I was so hungry. I'm like, there's a hot dog stand right there. I'm like, but I thought that's all I was. It's crazy. But so I'm super tired. It's sunny out. It's hotter than hell, it's humid as hell. And there's a bench right there on Third Street. And so, you know, it's a real East Village, real eclectic area. And so I sit on the bench. Right. And so I'm like, oh, relax, what about my phone? I start doing these, like, social media posts and like updating pictures. And next thing I know, like a couple of minutes later, I hear this like this knock and this boom boom and the door swings open and this door right next to the bench. And this guy, this big burly guy with the most New York accent, he pops his head out and he's like, hey, get the fuck off our bench. Just like that to. And I'm like, holy shit. You know, I'm like, OK, all right, I'm I'm out of here. I wouldn't come to New York to die or pick a fight. So pick get up. And I, I start moving down the block and then I pause for a second turn around like what the hell was I sitting in front of. I was sitting in front of the Hells Angels chapter of Motorcycle Gang Club in East Village and I had no idea. And there's a reason why nobody else is sitting on that bench like people knew better. The locals knew better.

Mubasher Iqbal: Yeah, New York's a fantastic place. But if you don't know exactly where you are or what's around you, that sort of old time, you can you can get into some scrapes that you really would expect the kind of lying to yourself. So, yeah, no, I mean the legs. I mean, I live in New York for a few years and it was fantastic. Obviously not the best. Place to start a family to have kids and stuff, so once once we got at that point, that was when we kind of moved kind of out of the city and stuff. So I tell people all the time, I'm like, if you're young and single, any big city, really, it's a fantastic place to be. But once you get a little bit older, you know, being out here in the suburbs, having like a nice house with a yard and two cars and doing no internal white picket fence thing, you know, especially now in the middle of the pandemic, it was fantastic to have like a whole house so that we could all kind of spread out and have our own space. I can't imagine being in like a sort of eight, nine hundred square foot apartment and being squished, like, on top of each other as well. So, yeah.

Travis: And upstate New York, I'm assuming, is more chill and it's just better for the family.

Mubasher Iqbal: And yeah, I mean, to buy a house up here was way, way, way more affordable than anything anywhere close to New York City and stuff like that. And so it's just too much. Yeah. It's like you said, I mean, like there's you know, there's not much public transportation around here area to be like that. So you have that and. Yeah, but I mean, we're where we live. Well, we're actually two hours from New York City. We're also two hours from Boston as well. So it kind of in a cool spot. So you still have the opportunity to go down and watch your friends as well as you can watch them, as well as if you're into music or anything like that. There's lots of concerts and things like that as well that you can that you can find within driving distance.

Travis: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm out here in L.A. now. I'm originally from Chicago, but I moved to L.A. about a decade ago so you could say I spent my late 30s, early 40s in L.A. It's pretty wild out here and I don't know if I'm gonna stay here forever. I mean, I love the weather, but I'm looking at like San Diego and some other places. We'll see.

Mubasher Iqbal: You know, I did some work for some video game companies, so I had to spend some time out in L.A. as well. And that's got a completely different vibe. I lived in San Francisco for a while, which had its own very specific feel. And then L.A. once once I was visiting there, I was like, this is nothing like California, like the rest of California. I mean, that's to me was like the amazing thing about moving out to the States was that, yeah, it's one country, but it's a very, very, very big country. And you can travel very long distance to still be in the same country, but then feel like you're in a completely different place as well. So it's a very fun place to be. All politics aside, we know all that stuff. The country itself is still a fantastic place to be. And we'll find out if you like, six or seven days what the next four years looks like because. Well, yeah, we will.

Travis: Yeah, and you're right. I mean, that's what's great about the states is like all these cities are so different and like and it's funny because these cities go through cycles. Like I'm from Chicago. And when I was growing up Detroit, Michigan, where half of my family's from, it was not a pleasant place to be, you know, in the late eighties and stuff like that and early 90s. But now Detroit is having a real resurgence and they have a real great food scene there. They've got a good musical scene, tech music. So it's interesting for Sherman.

Mubasher Iqbal: Yeah. I mean, even New York City, I mean, like early eighties, late 70s, early 80s, even the late 80s, there was a very, very little of New York City that you would actually want to walk around, especially in like the evening and stuff. And so even that went through its cycle of city was like not so much I wanted to be, but after a while they got kind of cleaned up and I got a lot of paper as well. So I was glad I was there when when I was and not a few years earlier.

Travis: Well, that's awesome, man. By trade. You're an engineer, right? Yeah.

Mubasher Iqbal: I mean, I tell people I started doing this stuff when there really wasn't like this separation. Like we used to make sites, like we used to make websites. I was one of these Web webmasters. Right. People come to us, say we need to build a website. And we didn't have like you're a designer, you're a developer, you're a funny guy, you're a brick. And it was just like you're the dude who makes the website. And so, yes, I've been around this, the scene for a really long time. Officially, I still call myself a back end developer, but because I've been around for such a long time, I'm definitely what you'd call a full stack Jack of all trades kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Travis: So you were working I mean, you were like me, probably like I remember when the Internet first came around, like I was coding like and I'm not a developer or an engineer by trade. I'm just I'm a non tech founder. But back then I was interested, I still interested in code and I was doing like HTML for like my favorite band sites and stuff. That was really cool. But the more involved now.

Mubasher Iqbal: Yeah, I mean in many ways it is wonderful, but it's also easier now, like there's so many tools and things out there now that you can put up on site now without even having to understand it as well. So there's that kind of separation that's happened. Yes. There's if you know how to code or you want to know how to code, you can do all that stuff and learn all of the. Technology and really getting to that side of things as well, but if you just want to I just want to cut out of sight, you can just point and click and update a few bits and pieces here and there. And you have a site lives. So it's kind of an interesting place.

Travis: Yeah, that's what I'm trying to tell Founders' all the time. Like, the technical debt is so low these days and now you have this whole no code movement going on, all these coded apps that are helping you do things with no code.

Travis: It's interesting. But yeah, I mean, there's no reason. I mean, like the excuses keep melting away for founders. And I mean, I'm constantly preaching. Just take the first fucking step, you know what I mean? Do I make something? Build something?

Mubasher Iqbal: That's really what I've been telling a lot of people. I'm like because people you people still do. People come to me all the time like this idea. I want to I want to make this application, but I can't code. I don't know how to, you know, will you help me? It kind of essentially kind of thing. And I'm still like a couple of years ago, it was it would really I would have to make that kind of evaluation of it. Is this something I want to do? Is is this something I want to help with or is this something I haven't done for right now? And you would have to kind of be joyous. But now I just tell people, look, just go launch a landing page, just go launch a blog, just go do something that shows that what you want to do is actually something people actually want. And if you can show me that there's you know, you've got a blog with one hundred thousand readers or twenty thousand readers or whatever it is, it shows me not just me, but it shows everybody that the thing that you want to do is something that people actually want. And if you can show that to anybody you can hire, you can find people who will help you. You can go raise capital with that kind of audience that you have. And you can do that without having any technical skills whatsoever.

Travis: Now, yeah, you know, personally, for me, I'm in a conundrum because I'm telling you, I have a fifteen year old son is Colin, and I'm telling him, dude, you're living in one of the most remarkable times of our species. What do you mean Dad? And I'm like, well, here's a thing... like the earth is like billions of years old. You know, Homo sapiens only been around from, what, a million years or I don't know, the math is on it. But, you know, and we went from like fire to launching satellites within thousands of years. I mean, if you take those thousands of years and you put it on the timeline of the earth, I mean, we have exponentially and we continue to to go forward with technology.

Travis: And so I'm like, oh, my God, this is crazy. But but at the same time, as a father, I don't even know where to steer him to because things are changing so quickly. I'm like, one moment I wake up like you need to be a blockchain architect, you know, it's like, no, no, no, you need to be a growth hacker.

Travis: Fucking you're going to be a cook. You know, I just don't know where to go, you know? I mean, do you struggle with that a little bit with your kids or clean? You better become epidemiologist because viruses are going to be everywhere. Right? Nanotechnology.

Mubasher Iqbal: You know, I do struggle with that. And, you know, I tried not to force my kids to do a specific thing. Right. Like I mean, I know when I was growing up and being from Southeast Asia, being from the Indian subcontinent and stuff, if you weren't a lawyer or a accountant or something professional like that, you know, you wouldn't you weren't held in the highest of a state. So my friends would have loved if I went to school to be a lawyer or an accountant or whatever. But I chose to be a software guy. And they were like, I have no idea what you're talking about. It's like, what is this computer stuff you keep talking about? Yeah. And so I've tried to encourage my kids, not so much down the specific path about what you should be doing and stuff more, just encouraging them to be open to new things and to learn new things, because I think to some degree, you know, you can try and stare them down a path right now. But we don't know what the world will be in two or three years even, let alone five or ten years. So I think the most important skill that anybody can have these days is just the willingness and the ability to learn new things. If you have that ability, then wherever the world ends up, then I think you'll be able to kind of handle it and you'll be able to kind of make the most of it, rather than just having one skill that you took this sort of young adult life. Just try to achieve that one one specific thing instead.

Travis: Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I think I was I might have been the opposite. I had no direction from my parents and they got divorced when I was a senior in high school. And they split up and I was kind of on my own. But it seemed like there was some some expectations for you as you were growing up. How did you break through that mould that they wanted you to be in?

Mubasher Iqbal: Well, I mean, fortunately, I was also the first person in my family coming over from Pakistan and stuff who went to university kind of at the time. So to some degree didn't really matter what I was studying, the fact that I was not at the university, I was like, I've already way ahead of everybody else, so. It became a little bit easier for me to kind of be just to basically say that I don't want to be a lawyer because I didn't want to be a lawyer.

Travis: Were you like the shot caller at the family parties like we were? You like looking down at the cousins, like did. And have you been in the universe yet? No. OK, then shut up.

Mubasher Iqbal: Well, it's funny because I was the youngest of four kids as well. And so it was kind of weird, right? Like in that I was the one leaving to how the universe and everything, but I was also the youngest. So I mean, I'm sure I had an attitude back then. I mean, I guess everybody has an attitude like that. But it was also I mean, I think ultimately what ended up happening was that I didn't really have any road bumps along the way. Like I mean, I went to university. I get a really cool internship while I was at university. So I did kind of what they used called sandwich programs. I went to school for two years. I went out to work for a year, and then I did a final year and that one year that I was out working for a big bank in the center of London. And so I think that one year just kind of eased my parents mind that I wasn't just wasting my time, you know, like I was like, oh, you could go work for a big bank in the center of London doing this computer stuff. Well, that's fantastic. But it's like I think it's kind of eased everybody's mind that I wasn't I wasn't going to be some struggling artist the rest of my life or anything like that.

Travis: Ok, so you've been tinkering your whole life, so you're making all these things. I want you to tell me a little bit about some of those things or maybe the most interesting side project. Then you have this this moment where you are Product Hunt, Maker of the year. Talk us through that a little bit.

Mubasher Iqbal: Yeah. So, I mean, I pretty much I don't know exactly. When I started to play with computers, I was about eight years old, as close as I can remember. We got a 20 Commodore Vic 20 that we got in the family. We used to attach it to the TV like I used to do way back when. And so I just kind of started to play around with it. And that's kind of when I started to like, this is cool. Like, I can make things happen on the screen and stuff. Ever since then, I've just been kind of tinkering with things. And because back then you didn't really study computers too much in high school or anything like that, you have to wait till your anniversary. But I was tinkering with them in the evenings and weekends, even way back way back then, I, I released my I say I'm doing air quotes, you can see. But I released some software when I was 11 years old. I put it on a floppy disk and the way I said doing so do do those kind of things. So so ever since then I've been I've been kind of playing around.

Mubasher Iqbal: I built what you would term now a side project. I probably released my first one in two thousand and one. I think I kind of built my first website. That was my own. It wasn't something that somebody hired me to do or anything like that. And I just did it for fun. And then ever since then, it just it's just been something that I do in my spare time. I've always had a full time job is well, either working for start ups or kind of agency world and working in the agency world, but also always in weekends and evenings and stuff. I'd just like to play around with stuff and kind of make stuff interesting projects, probably the one that you may you may or may not have heard of, but it's one that probably had the most publicity. About three years back, I built a website with somebody I met online. We never actually met in person lives in Eastern Europe. We built a website called Will Robots Take My Job. And it was just this fun little thing that we built in two weeks.

Travis: And this is what led to you being the maker of the year for Product Hunt or was the criteria for that was just like output, like how many things you you're putting out there into.

Mubasher Iqbal: Product Hunt has never said what the exact criteria is. It's a combination of a number of those things, like how many things you built, how well they received. It's a magic formula that they have, but they have never really shared with anybody what the formula is. But yeah, I think a large part of why I was selected to make the effort was because I just made so many back. Yeah, but yeah.

Travis: So those were cool things. I mean, they don't just arbitrarily pick it like they had there been some fanfare, you were like, oh no. I mean generators go off on the website, right.

Mubasher Iqbal: Oh yeah. Like I mean I've had products that I built on my own and with other people that have like three thousand upvotes on Paracon to have five hundred upvotes. Not so it's not like stuff that I've just launched. Then I have launched and I've got like one or two them or anything like that. So, so even though I'm kind of putting out a lot of stuff, it's stuff that is being well received and people like and people use a lot as well. So yeah, absolutely. It's not just how many how much stuff you put out, but it's got to be high quality stuff as well.

Travis: Absolutely. Yeah. Well now you've set the bar for yourself. Now you've got to work for twenty one. Yes.

Mubasher Iqbal: So yeah. I mean just going back to "robots". I mean so we put that out, we built it like two weekends and in the first week it had four million page views.

Travis: Wow. I'm obviously I'm sure you weren't like strategizing. I'm sure you didn't put it out there, and so was it protectant you feel like or was it a hacker news? What was driving all the visit?

Mubasher Iqbal: I mean, I tell people like pertinence itself isn't the end of the road, right? Like you put it on to kind of help you spread it even wider than that. Right. Because the big advantage that you get from program is that there's people on that as journalists on there. There's bloggers on there who are looking for cool stuff that they want to write about. So when we put wheel robots, I put I think I put it both on Hacker News and on four on the same Friday morning, I think it was put it on there, but it got picked up. Somebody had seen it either. I'm not sure exactly where they saw it when they saw the news, but it was a writer for Permax Web, saw it and wrote a little article about it. And from the next web, which is actually owned by MSNBC, is owned by NBC as well, picked it up. And actually it did appear on appeared on MSNBC dot com as well. And so once it gets the international site like that, it just blew up. It just went everywhere after that. So it was completely unintentional, I should say. It wasn't like a planned PR blitz or anything like that. It was just like a cool thing that we built that we thought the world would like.

Mubasher Iqbal: And it just it just hit right. Because there was nothing like this. Like, this is like twenty seventeen. I think we launched that one. You know, people were interested about like the A.I. and some people were concerned about all my jobs can be automated away as well. So we just kind of hit it right at the right time and it just exploded. So let me ask a question. Did you guys ever tried to monetize it? So why not the very next day? So on the Saturday, we were scrambling. We were like, OK, where can we get some ads that we can throw up? And just so that we can because obviously we didn't really have a plan, like we're going to make you money for it. But obviously, once you get in that first day we had we turned something like a half a million page views just in the first 12 hours that it was actually kind of upped. And so, yeah, so we scrambled and we we found somebody who would put some ads up on that we made in the first month. We made like three and a half thousand dollars off of that just with just like kind of stock ads is kind of essentially.

Travis: And so where is it today that you guys kind of.....

Mubasher Iqbal: No. So we sold it, you know. Yeah. So it's been a year and a half, I think, since we sold it. So, yeah. So we kind of ran it for a year and a half and it was still doing I think it was still doing somewhere between three hundred thousand and half a million page views a month back then. And so, but we were like, we don't know what to do with it. Right. We just like we didn't really have a plan for such a very specific name as well. Right. Like, it's not like you could kind of commit to it and just make it something else. And so. So, yeah. So we just we we kind of started with just putting up on paper actually just to kind of see if there's any interest. And eventually we sold it off. But but yeah. So we ended up selling it based on I think we sold it for what do we sell it for. It was about three or four times what it was doing in terms of ad revenue at the time, in terms of annual ad revenue kind of at the time. So it was not a bad thing. I mean, we basically spent like maybe like a week's worth of work was actually working on it. And so I think Olean, in terms of how much money we made from the ads that we had and how much we sold it for, I think we got close to about it was somewhere between the 50 and 60.

Travis: That's great, man. Like, I mean, that's people would I mean, founders would love to do them. And it was it was a quick exit, too, you know. Exactly. That's fantastic, man. And, you know, once you get that first taste that either that first exit or that first revenue dollar coming in on the street payment processor, I mean, you're pretty hooked, you know.

Mubasher Iqbal: Yeah. Once you realize that, you can pretty much do anything and, you know, if it's just right, it can make money. Right leg. I mean, because we didn't really think we were going to make money for that particular site. It was just kind of that that we were doing. But once you realize that really just just about anything on the Internet can make money. And at that point, you know, I'm just going to make more stuff and we'll see if works as well.

Travis: Absolutely. Man, that's awesome. So I did some poking around. And are you working with Nathan on something?

Mubasher Iqbal: Yeah. So I met Nathan about eighteen months. I guess it's been a while. Yeah, I think about eight months now. He's out here now.

Mubasher Iqbal: He's out here in L.A.. I don't know if it's temporary or permanent, but him and I, we're going to go have coffee. I haven't followed up with him.

Mubasher Iqbal: I think he's he's there for Halloween. So you should you should reach out. Yeah. He spends his time between L.A. and Austin, so. Yeah. So I'm just wherever he feels like that's kind of where he is. So I think I've met Nathan once in person. He came into New York City and I went in to in to kind of hang out with him as well. It's been about eight months. We kind of working on some stuff on the side, just Onex, all of our other things that we were doing as well. Just kind of see if we like working together and. And just kind of working on stuff, but eventually that kind of turned into what is now powderpuff. And so we're both not doing it full time.

Travis: You guys are working together full time on founder path. Yes. I want to hear about this is what I say.

Mubasher Iqbal: I mean, obviously, as far as you know, with Nathan, he's got about 60 things happening with his podcast and his book and his magazine and sort of all sorts of things that I've got my hold of me, but I got all these side projects I like to do. Is that as much as full time as we can do? That's kind of what we're up to. But it's our main focus right now and probably will be for the next few years at least.

Mubasher Iqbal: Are you guys in stealth mode or can you tell the listeners a little?

Travis: Oh, no, no, it's yeah. It's like I talked about it on his podcast and he's tweeting channel and stuff like that, so. Yeah. So the path is kind of an alternative way to raise funding if you're a successful business. So if you have some history in terms of subscriber information and we can analyze that. So if you connect like your account with us, purely read only access. We don't we we don't need any other kind of access. We can kind of look at how much you're charging your customers happy, your customers are based on your attention and that can and some of that kind of stuff. And if you're looking to raise some capital because you want to expand, you want to hire some people, but you have some cash in the bank, normally you would have to go to a capitalist and say, I want to raise some money here, some chunk of my company that you can have. We will actually lend you the money instead, and you'll probably will we'll figure out what the terms are and all that kind of stuff. But that way you get to keep control of your company. You keep all of your shares and all the records and everything like that. And you come and we will help fund whatever expansion it is that you want to take. You want to do it.

Travis: So that's fantastic, because I love any outlet for founders to or any opportunity for founders to get funding. I think I've taken a capital advance now twice. And so I'm really appreciate that. So basically. So who's funding on the lending side then for Founders Path?

Mubasher Iqbal: As you said at the beginning, it was Nathan's idea. And so he came to me with the idea is he's not a technical guy either, so he wanted to test the idea himself. So he put up his own capital. And so we let that money out to a few people and I believe they they paid it back now. So that's good. And so since we proved that the model worked and he, as you know, is a very well connected individual, so we now have access to capital from other people since we've proven that the model works. So just like some institutions will put money in the stock market or they put it in bonds or whatever, they've allocated some percentage of their portfolio that they've said, hey, if you guys find some companies, we want to borrow some cash. We have access to those funds now. And so they give it to us. I believe it's at 12 percent. And then whatever we can make over that, we pay them back obviously at 12 percent and whatever extra we can make on that in terms of how we lend out to the founders, that's the percentage that we owe.

Travis: The work that we did. 12 percent seems high, though, in today's rate amount. I'm surprised they're getting away with charging you guys that much.

Mubasher Iqbal: I think, again, I mean I mean, even though we prove the model, we're still proving the model. So I'm expecting that as we have some history and stuff and again, as we prove that we can build the formulas and the models, that we can prove that the risk is is low enough because obviously you're saying four percent, but how many percentage of those companies are going to default and you won't get any of the money back because they stop operating or whatever it is? Right. So so you've got to factor that stuff into it as well in terms of how you're basically lending money out to people and we're expecting them to pay back. But that's not always how the world works.

Travis: Well, I mean, it's a great idea. It'll be interesting to see where you guys go. If you guys you do a rolling fund or you just work directly with, like family funds or, you know, nature. But, yeah, I mean, the interest rates are there. And why go to an investment banker or a bank and not get paid anything on a CD or something when you could be doing something like this and you guys intimately know how SAS works. You know that once you're running and you have revenue, as long as a pandemic doesn't happen. Right.

Mubasher Iqbal: In some ways, this is like the ideal storm for us to because like you said, people don't understand this. Right? So the fact that we can actually look at the size and frankly, a lot of SaaS businesses are pretty well right now as well, because people have shifted their operations from in-person stuff to kind of online as well. So it's actually turned out the I mean, a lot of SAS companies to us and say, look, we actually need to grow right now. We we need to expand. We need to hire more people. But we would like some funds to be able to do all of that stuff as well. And so it's actually. Yeah, although. It overall has been a slowdown on the economy as a whole. Certain parts of it, but it's actually helping out a lot as well.

Travis: Oh, yeah, it's been a great year for tech and a great year for SaaS. And it's hard to pick a silver lining out of this. So many tragic deaths, but it is pushing everybody forward digitally. You know, it's a good thing because we're going to see some gains economically for that over the over the years. But that's awesome, man. Well, so I'll definitely link to that in the show. Notes for Founders Passo. That's cool, Yonathan. We're working on that. I wish you guys much success. Talk to me a little bit about like professionally and maybe even personally, some to you. But like, what's some of the biggest influencers in your life?

Mubasher Iqbal: That's I mean it's interesting because people are asking that a lot and I tend to read a lot. Right. Like, I read a lot of books and I kind of try and learn from other people kind of over the years and stuff. But I don't really follow individual people. I believe very firmly that everybody has to forge their own path and find the thing that works for them. So in that way, although obviously, you know, you kind of see other people are up there and stuff, we try and take what's worked for somebody else and say, how how can I apply that kind of stuff? I mean, that to me has always been kind of what's worked out. Well, not trying to replicate what other people have created and kind of achieved and just kind of thing was the thing that I want to do and kind of how do I make up with all the things I've learned from kind of other people out there instead?

Travis: Ok. All right. Fair enough. Wwll you do got a lot going on. You're constantly tinkering with stuff, but where do you see yourself in five years?

Mubasher Iqbal: Yeah, no, I mean, I think like you said, I mean I mean, obviously hoping that the path is a massive, massive hit, but really I don't really see myself doing anything to either. Right. Like, I mean, I'd still just be finding the next thing that kind of work on really is just the kind of mindset that I have. It's idle hands. I'm not a good thing. And so so I absolutely would still be just like tinkering on stuff and trying to find what the big idea is.

Travis: Yeah. You know, I'm kind of the same way. I have my hands on a lot of things and I don't know, I don't have it because I'm getting older or what, but I feel like I'm definitely feeling like I'm getting to spread out thin on myself too much. So it's definitely something I should be caution cautious of because, you know, you got to focus on maybe one or two or three things and that's it. And some of the conventional advice is just focus on that one thing, right?

Mubasher Iqbal: Yeah. And I like that to me is like like I said, my main focus these days is on the path. And so. Absolutely. But just like everybody else, you still need to have a hobby to have things that you do for fun and entertainment as well. And that's what a lot of these side things are like. I mean, some like the way that I try to explain it is like some people come home from work, you know, from having worked a 10 hour days and they go spend three hours in the garden planting flowers and things like that. All of them go to the garage and play with their car engines and stuff like that just to kind of unwind or whatever it is that they want to do. For me, that unwinding happens to me strangely enough, even though I worked eight hours, 10 hours a day in front of a computer, for me, the hobby and the fun stuff still happens in front of a computer as well.

Travis: No, you're so right about that. I mean, our dads used to go to a job, work 9:00 to 5:00, and then you'd catch them doing a hobby or usually working out a garage or building something mechanical. Whereas, you know, you and I were doing things online, which is interesting.

Mubasher Iqbal: And I think that to me has always been the thing that I think has surprised a lot of people, because I speak to a lot of engineers and stuff like that. They're like my I go to work every day. I come home. The last thing I want to do is I want to turn on a computer I like. They just want to shut the fuck up and just ignore it until the next morning. But I you know, I come home and I'm like, OK, I know I worked all day. I looked to the screen for eight hours a day, but that's something I was doing for somebody else. So I like somebody paid me to work on something out to make something. Now I get to do whatever I want to do. I get to make it look like however I want to I get to build whatever idea I think is really also the goal. So that to me has always been the sort of thing that I think kind of makes me stand out sometimes from love, from a lot of other kind of engineers and stuff, is that I can make that separation between what I'm doing for being paid for work and the stuff that I want to do in weekends and evenings and kind of stuff like that.

Travis: So, yeah, and you know, what's interesting is there is so much efficiency and I get off on building something, but now I'm getting off even more. I'm building it quickly and test that if I'm tinkering around the garage, I don't have those same efficiencies. Like, you know, if I want to build something like, oh, shit, I got to go to Home Depot now, I'm like, that's a pain in the ass.

Travis: I want that same efficiency with offline, as I have as online, and I can't get it, so I end up staying in the online space because I'm addicted to those those signals.

Mubasher Iqbal: And for me personally, too, is I mean, that to me is the most interesting, bit like starting with a blank canvas. And then within a few hours you have something that you've created that didn't exist already. And so that going from that blank canvas to something functional, something something that works, something you can share with other people is the most exciting bit, right? I mean, yes, I've done the working for big corporations and making stuff at scale scales, the hundreds of thousands of people every month, and that even more than that. So that has its own challenges as well. But but to just be able to sit down every evening or every weekend or whatever the blank canvas and just have an idea and at the end of that weekend or whatever, have something that is actually functioning application as well. That's a whole other. And Dauphiné that you get from this, just that. So the creation kind of thing that you really can't do kind of anywhere else.

Travis: But yeah, I just thought of an idea like I'm I'm addicted to, like, wireframe, and I love having an idea, waking up with an idea. And I'm like, shit, that's a fucking cool idea. Like, well, let me wireframe because I've gotten really good over the years wireframe because it cuts down on the technical debt and it's just easier to have a conversation with the engineer and then you can take that wireframe and make it into a live HTML kind of dummy version, which is even the next even cooler. Right. But it'd be kind of cool if there was like an MVP service for you, like you agree on a set price for a single feature or single purpose app, and then you provide the wire frames and they for like four grand or five grand, they just build it for you. Boom, you're done, you know, and then you can just start playing around that kind of cool.

Mubasher Iqbal: Yeah, no, I build stuff up like that. When I was doing freelance work, a lot of what I used to do was that kind of stuff where it was people like I got this idea. It's very specific functionality. I need it in like a week, which is how we think it should work. And they just kind of left me alone for a week. Said he is the screenplay that we think we need a few moms. And it worked out well because I think you're right, too, because, one, if you can do it in that short amount of time, take six months to do it, then it's not worth it for kind of anybody. But you can do it in that short amount of time, even if they could then go use that to actually raise the money so they can make like the next version or whatever it is, everybody's happier having something that they can actually interact with and something they can actually see and kind of feel as opposed to just like talking in sort of high level ideas, ends up saving so much time and money in terms of actually having a functional thing that it makes it worthwhile to spend that week to achieve something instead.

Travis: Yeah, we just got to we got to spread the gospel, man. We just got to help founders just take that first step, you know. Yeah, a lot of them are sitting on the sidelines and they should be taking the first step because that's part of investing in yourself. You never know where it's going to lead.

Mubasher Iqbal: That to me is always been. The other thing is that I tell people is that you never know where you're going to end up, just me meeting eight and 18 months ago, I had no idea we were going to work on Powderpuff. Like, that's not the idea that we were working on, you know, way back when. So, you know, it may not be like the big massive. You're not going to build the next Facebook or whatever, but it's a cool idea if it's something that you're excited about, just like and if it ends up being something fantastic, if not, at least you kind of enjoyed yourself along the way and you made something that hopefully you found helpful as well.

Mubasher Iqbal: Absolutely, man. All right. Well, don't want to keep you too long. It was so cool meeting you, man. And you said you're a kind of a prolific reader. So what's something you've read interesting lately or even documentaries?

Mubasher Iqbal: So I actually read a fair number of stuff during the pandemic started because we are locked in our rooms and stuff. But I think if people haven't read it, I would highly recommend to sell build a sell. Yeah. If you guys haven't actually read that I reread that recently got adventured that. I think that's an awesome book because it, I mean it talks a lot about it just talks a lot about the psychology of how you should build things and also how you should feel about the things that you've created, because chances are we don't live. Sixty years ago, fifty years ago, where you used to do one thing for your whole life. And that's that's kind of what you would do these days. I think that should be a lot more on a build something. I want to make it something significant and then I want to sell it to something and then do something else as well. I think that's the other thing that kind of founders get. They fall in love too much with their idea and kind of what they created. And I think they lose a lot of opportunity to kind of exit and do something else as well. And so I think that's a really good book because it teaches you how to do that. But also from a psychology standpoint of, yes, you should be passionate about what you want to do, but it's not you like it's just something that you have. You working on right now, and you might want to do something else as well.

Travis: Absolutely. You have built a cell by John Warrilow. It's got four and a half stars on Amazon, 700 ratings, basically. And it's a fairly new book. I mean, it's only twenty twelve. So it's only like eight years old. But, yeah, that's a pop. I've seen that. I've heard about that book. I haven't actually I think I've read the book or got halfway through it. I'm a horrible reader, but I do read it. Well, yeah. Bill Jr., whatever you're going to build, that's a mistake that I made early on. But whatever you're building, this is for any of the listeners, build it with the intent to sell. You can be your baby and you can coddle it and work on it and perfect it as long as you want. But make sure all your documentation is up to speed. Make sure you have some sort of analytic software that's tracking how much revenue you've made.

Travis: And so you can open up the books, if you will, to somebody and you never know when you're going get an offer you can't refuse, you know. Yeah, absolutely. So great meeting you, sir. Great talking. I appreciate you coming on, man. I got to get the phone with you and we'll talk again, OK? That's good. All right. Bye. Thanks a lot.

Thanks for listening to this episode. Go to SaaSpnr.blog. That's S A A S P N R dot blog, SaaSpnr.blog and check out more episodes and the articles I write all about being a founder and launching your next business.